I Love You by Lisa Fox (@LisaFoxRomance)

Posted onMarch 8, 2016by|Comments Off on I Love You by Lisa Fox (@LisaFoxRomance)

There comes a point in every romance where the hero has to say ‘I love you.’ It doesn’t matter hot or how frequent or how many wildly waving mountains of bliss explode throughout the story, without those three little words you just don’t have a romance.

Which is good. Sex scenes are nice, but love is the ultimate payoff.

But how do you make as special as it deserves to be without resorting to cheesiness and cliché?

It’s especially hard because inevitably, in real life, this admission usually does come during the most clichéd of scenarios. Over the romantic candlelit dinner. After making sweet love. On a moonlit walk. You know.

I don’t think you necessarily have to avoid these situations in order to present an effective and emotional moment but I do think it is wrong to rely on them to make the scene for you. Just because the moon is bright and the tide is in and the breeze is gentle and she is beautiful and he is hard does NOT mean that this is love. Or even should be the moment for the big love words.

What matters is that the climatic confession has to be true to the story, true to the characters. The hero really needs to be the one to dictate when and how and where he gets to tell the heroine that she’s the one, the only one for him. And sometimes, the strangest situations are so much more poignant and real. I have one hero, he kills undead things and he’s not really a candlelight and romance kind of guy. He confesses his love a minute before they enter a den of zombies. Not exactly high romance, but for him, it was perfect.

Climaxes may come and go many times and in many forms, but the thing the whole story should always be working toward is that most critical climax. The I Love You.